Forgotten Foes (PFRPG)

For every light, there is a darkness...
For every hero, there is a villain...
For every adventurer, there is a monster...

Forgotten Foes is a 183-page sourcebook featuring both classic and all-new monsters for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. You'll find old favorites like the crypt thing and grick alongside newer Third Edition mainstays like the nightshades.

We've also combed through 3E-compatible monster books to bring you new versions of the nefarious inphidians and dangerous sin dragons—just to name a few!

Each monster comes fully detailed and illustrated along with its own handy lore table for those knowledgeable adventurers who think they might be able to get an advantage before battle.

Over 100 monsters are waiting to see action in your campaign. Just open the cover, add plot, and allow Forgotten Foes to take your game to the next level!

Average product rating:

Forgotten, but not gone

Riddle me this, dear reader: what’s the difference between something old, and something classic? I can’t quite describe it, but I suspect it’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. It’s that principle that makes Forgotten Foes, from Tricky Owlbear Publishing, such a great monster book – it’s a book of classic monsters brought up-to-date for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game.

Of course, looking at the book’s pedigree, it’s kind of hard to imagine this book not being totally awesome. Written by Mark Gedak and Stefen Styrsky of the Grand OGL Wiki, with a stable of artists from Headless Hydra Games, and of course published through Tricky Owlbear, this book is at the center of a perfect storm of talent. It quite literally had to be just this good.

Just shy of two hundred pages long, Forgotten Foes brings over a hundred monsters to your Pathfinder game. I can’t quite say “new” monsters, because a significant majority of these creatures are ones who were mainstays of 3.5 who were subsequently abandoned during the Pathfinder changeover. Not all of these fall under that category, however, as there’s a handful that are from third-party 3.5 sources, also updated here. And I’m sure that a few totally new monsters are in here as well, though it’s difficult to be totally sure.

The book’s technical aspects do what they’re supposed to do. Full bookmarks are here, and the text allows for copying and pasting. Besides the front and back covers (which display some truly stunning pieces. I don’t know what that monster is on the front cover, but he’s one intimidating bastard), each monster has a black and white illustration (though shading is used far more often than not), something I was grateful for, since illustrations are very important for showcasing monsters. There’s also an alternating border on the side of the pages.

Most of the monsters in the book are given a single page all to themselves, though sometimes this rule is broken. Each has the usual combination of stat block and descriptive text, but as an added bonus there’s also a box showing what you learn about the creature on a specific Knowledge check; it’s one of those little extras that really make a difference. I should mention that the flavor text for the monsters is original, since in most cases the original source didn’t make that part Open Game Content to begin with.

One of the things that might not be obvious on the first read-through, it should be noted, is that the authors sometimes slipped in new additions or other changes to some monsters during the update to Pathfinder. The ravid, for example, now has some variants listed, in case you want a ravid that is more in tune with the life of nature and animates plants, for instance. Titans are mostly the same, but have the ability to assume the form of an elemental; an aspect of how, as near-divine beings, they’re connected to the primal elements of the universe. Little things like that are all over the place.

Of course, some things didn’t make the transition. The tojanida, for example, only has a single stat block, rather than three for younger and older incarnations of the creature. Similarly, it would have been nice to have seen variants on the half-dragon template for the sin dragons.

The book has several appendices, and while these cover the usual ways of breaking down the monsters (by type, by CR, etc.) there’s also a bit of new rules here as well. A new planar trait is given, in reference to a particular monster’s entry. Several new spells are presented, mostly because some monsters use them as spell-like abilities. Interestingly, ten pages are given reprinting the universal monster rules from the Pathfinder Bestiary. Presumably this was done for ease of reference.

Forgotten Foes is one of those books where, having read it, I’m honestly not sure how I was running a Pathfinder game without it. There’s so many monsters in here that were staples of 3.5, it’s shocking they haven’t been brought to Pathfinder before now – the bodak, the hellcat, the formians; it’s past due for them to make a comeback. Pick up Forgotten Foes and let your PCs know that the monsters that they once feared have followed them to Pathfinder.

A good product...

This is a good product, with a nice selection of monsters. They add a couple of choices to the animal companion list, which is always nice. I particularly like the tables containing the possible lore a character can get about a monster, based on their knowledge roll.

What an awesome product!

Short summary review: this is to the Pathfinder RPG what the Tome of Horrors was to 3rd Edition. Buy it. Buy it now. I'll wait...

For the slightly longer version of that, Forgotten Foes converts several classic open-gaming monstrosities to the Pathfinder RPG, and does so with style and aplomb. Each conversion is lovingly crafted, so classic creatures like the Aerial Servant, the Catoblepas, and the Aranea get as good a treatment as anything in the Bestiaries. What's even better is the new monsters, like the Chaosiics which finally fill that void in my heart since the Slaad became closed content, and the Tunnel Brute, which makes the loss of the Umber Hulk easier to bear. It's a must-have product, folks, and your game needs it whether you know it or not! Go buy it!

Very, very useful

GMs can really benefit from this book; plenty of variety ranging from planar to material. A new animal companion (Cooshee) and aquatic 0-HD race (Locathah), along with the cool spells in the appendix, makes this a tiebreaker for would-be buyers wondering about player options. The creature write-ups are solid with decent-to-excellent illustrations throughout (black and white).

Without covering every entry, my favorites were...

...the ten-page Chaosiic article filled with random-anatomy tables and five basic variants to tinker with, plus two Chaosiic Lords, and a new plane, Corrupting Chaos.
...the Devil Doll; at CR1 this creepy "toy" can be used anywhere.
...the Junk Elemental; nothing says surprise like an animate refuse pile. Also, be sure to check out the Plane of Junk.
...the Lejnth. I like the devil-but-not-a-devil status.
...the Mâlite, Denizens of Mâl. I absolutely love this article, but there's only one example of the creature (or rather, its host). Also includes Mâl's planar stats.
There's many more I really liked (for no sane reason at all), but I'll stop here and recommend this for anyone that simply needs more monsters.

Closing thoughts. This is a massive PDF and there is simply no way I could go into any detail on the monsters or spells, or this review would end up being several pages long. Each monster has a black and white image by it. The art runs from fair to pretty good. The monsters range from meh to pretty cool. Most are just updated monsters from other books. I am unsure how much the fluff changed as I didn't own many of these monsters in other books before now. I did like the DC lore table for each monster.

There was many monsters I liked, some made my laugh and some where creepy and everything inbetween. I think my favorites was the Sin Dragons and the Devil Doll. For the size the price is reasonable. So if you are wanting some of the monsters that haven't been updated to Pathfinder rules yet, here's your chance to pick up a lot of them for a reasonable price. I am not a big number cruncher, but nothing leaped out at me that was obviously wrong. So whats my review? I am giving this a 4 star, it is a good book. For a decent price for the content.